NEW DELHI: With its inner councils convinced that the party faces
near-certain defeat in the Uttar Pradesh
Assembly elections early next year, the BJP is being forced to consider
stratagems which it had earlier thought
unthinkable. One of them is to team up again with the BSP in the hope of
stalling the possible return of Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party.

``We cannot hope to win more than 60 seats in the 425-member Assembly,'' a
senior party leader from the state confided. But mere acceptance of that
possibility does not give the party bosses any comfort. In the aftermath of
the BJP's wipeout in the panchayat elections Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee is to shortly call a meeting of his senior party colleagues to
formally take a decision to remove chief minister Ram Prakash Gupta. But
even a belated change of leadership in UP may not be enough to extricate the
BJP from the shifting sands of caste equations in the state.

Gupta's replacement by another man -- Union ministers Rajnath Singh and
Santosh Gangwar are being mentioned -- does not make too much of a
difference. For it is too late for any leader now to even attempt to reverse
the trends which have already firmed up. After the departure of the
Backwards from the party's vote-bank with the ouster of Kalyan Singh, its
base is indeed thin and fragile.

As a result, party insiders say the BJP has been forced to consider
supporting Mayawati once again, directly or indirectly. That, they say, will
be less damaging than leaving the field free for a takeover by Mulayam
Singh's Samajwadi Party.

But Mayawati is acting cagey. Still bitter about the way the BJP broke her
party to gain a majority in the House,
Mayawati is unwilling to even acknowledge the possibility of returning to
power with the BJP's support. She is
certainly against any pre-poll alliance. ``I do not want any tie-up. If any
party wants to support me, it can'' she is
reported to have remarked.

Mayawati is apprehensive because any mention of an alliance with the BJP
would scare the Muslims away from her party.

The BSP, according to one analysis, has the support of about two per cent of
the state's Muslim population in
addition to another four per cent of the most backward castes. Add this to
her primary base of 17 per cent solid Dalit support, and the arithmetic
takes her total vote to about 25 per cent.

On the basis of this support base she can take her tally to about 100-110
seats. Indirect support from the BJP can raise the BSP tally to about 150,
UP observers point out. Still, she refuses to broach the issue of any
alliance at this juncture.

In an interesting reversal of fortunes, it is the BJP which seems to have
become the new untouchable in UP. That adds one more to Vajpayee's list of
home state problems.

Problem One: At a time when the upper castes are the party's mainstay after
it has lost its Backward support, even a hint of an alliance with Mayawati
is likely to trigger discontent if not an outright revolt by the upper
caste-dominated UP unit of the party.

Problem Two: If the Samajwadi Party returns to power in Lucknow it is sure
to have an adverse impact on Vajpayee's coalition government at the Centre
as some of the BJP's allies may think twice about their future in the NDA.

Response: Now that the party's so-called social engineering experiment of
caste synthesis has failed, the BJP is likely to play an upper caste card
trying for a consolidation of its existing support groups. The calculation
is that after the elections it can play the role of king-maker if not king.
That is where the Mayawati option comes in.